King John seals Magna Carta

Rebel barons made England's King John agree to a charter limiting royal power at Runnymede. Its clauses on lawful judgment and fair justice later shaped ideas of rights in many countries.

Most of the original 1215 clauses were rewritten or dropped within decades.

Context

King John had angered many barons with heavy taxes, costly failed wars in France and disputes with the Church. In 1215 a group of rebels seized London and forced talks. John agreed to terms and sealed the charter on June 15 in the meadows at Runnymede beside the Thames, and the barons made peace with him a few days later.

The 1215 charter was a long list of specific grievances, roughly 60 clauses, about feudal payments, Church freedoms, courts and royal officials. Clauses 39 and 40 are the best known: no free man could be imprisoned or stripped of his rights except by lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land, and justice was not to be sold, denied or delayed.

It failed quickly as a peace deal. Pope Innocent III declared it void in August 1215, civil war resumed, and John died in October 1216. Advisers to his young son Henry III reissued revised versions in 1216 and 1217, and the 1225 version became the standard text. Later generations, including 17th-century English lawyers and American founders, treated it as a symbol of limited government.